Entries in eBay
(5)

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images(PASADENA, Calif.) -- What was supposed to be a response to a call about a trespasser in Pasadena, Calif., took an unusual twist when police found an altar with human bones in a backyard, and now they are investigating how they were sold on eBay.

Pasadena police responded to the 800 block of North Oakland Avenue on Sunday after a woman living in the home reported an individual trespassing on her property.

“The officers went there on a whole different call. When they checked the area there was a makeshift altar that included some bones,” Lt. Terysa Rojas with the Pasadena Police Department Crimes Against Person’s division told ABC News. “The coroner determined them to be human bones.”

According to Rojas, the woman cooperated with police and was interviewed while the bones were turned over to the coroner’s office.

Investigators say the altar serves a religious purpose for the woman living in the home, more specifically a West African and Caribbean religion known as Santeria. However, throughout the investigation over the past couple of days, police learned the woman ordered the bones on eBay.

“There are some sites where you can order human bones or skulls through eBay,” Rojas said. “I don’t know where they get them or how they get to put them on eBay. That’s part of our investigation.”

Police say there were not only human bones, but also those of animal heads along with burned incense and candles. While the investigation is still preliminary, Rojas said there is nothing the woman can be charged with due to the religious purpose.

So begins the tongue-in-cheek, but completely serious, eBay listing for The Learning Center, a Langhorne, Pa., school that has found a unique method to fight debilitating budget cuts -- the school has put itself up for auction on eBay.

The Learning Center is an alternative high school program for students who have emotional or learning problems that prevent them from attending a regular high school, according to a statement from the school. Many of the school's students attend until they are ready to go back into the regular school system.

The starting bid is $599,995, the exact amount needed to keep the school open for the 2012-2013 school year. The Neshaminy School District is facing a $2 million deficit, according to the news release.

The eBay ad describes how the school has been a "saving grace" to students with problems who have suffered a number of problems, including physical or sexual abuse, anxiety, depression and substance abuse.

On a lighter note, the ad continues, "Sure, it sounds like a great cause, but what will you, the good Samaritan, get for your investment -- besides the feel good vibe of securing the future of so many otherwise lost young souls? Hold on to your bulging wallet, 'cause delivering an education to a group of kids who could really use it is just the beginning."

The ad lists benefits the buyer would enjoy including the naming rights, delivering the commencement speech on graduation day, a large pizza, a season pass for two to the football games and a personalized Learning Center coffee cup.

The new "owner" (students not included, according to the ad) would also get to choose the school's mascot, sort of.

"You get to choose a mascot ... out of the following three: a beaver, a hedgehog or a groundhog, all wearing an American Indian headdress (If you wish to select another animal you would need to pay an additional $7.65 over your winning bid to cover the additional Photoshop expense)," the ad reads.

The cheeky ad was written by father and son Steve and Casey Young of Langhorne and the original idea to put the school for sale came from 17-year-old Casey Young, who attended the school for about a year before going back to a regular school.

"The Learning Center basically turned him around and he needed it that year. And now, he's back in the general population doing great," Casey's father Steve Young told ABC News. "It could have saved his life."

Casey was recently doing a foreign exchange program in Brazil when he heard that The Learning Center was in danger of closing.

Ten years ago, the Young family had gained national attention when film and TV writer Steve Young put his family up for sale on eBay for $5 million. There were some bidders, but the ad was taken down by eBay before any deal was sealed.

But Casey thought the same idea could be applied to the school.

"Casey kept saying, 'What if, like, Bill Gates reacted or some guy shows it to a billionaire who had trouble as a teenager?'" Steve Young said. "It was realistic that if it did get attention, that someone would put up that money. It's like throwing a Hail Mary pass. It's a long shot, but sometimes they play out."

The school's principal JoAnn Holland and the Neshaminy School District got on board with the plan and the ad went up. Neither Holland nor the superintendent immediately responded to request for comment.

"To keep from being closed by the district, we cut expenses as far as we could," Holland said in a news release. "We would have to make up an additional $600,000 shortage to keep our school operating as we have in the past."

"I know it's crazy," said Holland. "But with the good The Learning Center does, it's crazier not to do it."

"Besides it being very important to us and to my son, there are too many stories from all the other parents and kids who it turned their lives around," Young said. "We cannot waste the future for these kids."

Courtesy Lisa Czibor(CHICAGO) -- Before he traveled in limousines and motorcades, President Obama shuttled himself to and from work at the Springfield, Ill., state house in a 2005 grey Chrysler sedan.

The owner of the car is now offering the ultimate piece of Obama memorabilia on eBay. The starting bid? A cool $1 million.

“How do you put a price on something like that?” Lisa Czibor, who is running the auction for a “friend of a friend,” told ABC News.

Obama leased the Chrysler 300C from 2004 until 2007, then traded it in for a hybrid vehicle.

After sitting on a Ford lot for a while, the car was sent to a Chrysler lot where its current owner purchased it.

“The guy who bought it found out it was Obama’s car,” Czibor said. “He put 1,600 miles on it and once Barack was elected president, he stopped driving it.”

The listing has received a lot of clicks, but no interested buyers have emerged.

“There are other cars that have sold for large amounts of money,” Czibor said.

She pointed to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 1977 white Peugeot, which sold for approximately $2.4 million at auction, Adolf Hitler’s convertible blue Mercedes, which sold for $8 million, and Pope John Paul II’s 1975 Ford, which sold for $690,000.

The auction ends on Feb. 1.

The car’s Kelly Blue Book value is $14,446 -- not including the presidential prestige.

Photodisc/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- A man entrusted for four decades with guarding the nation’s most treasured historical records might spend the next 10 years in prison after stealing hundreds of recordings and selling them online.

Leslie Charles Waffen, formerly one of the top officials at the National Archives, pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges he put stolen sound recordings up for sale on eBay.

“This case is especially egregious because the defendant was a high-ranking government employee who violated his obligation to protect historical records,” U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a prepared statement announcing the plea deal. “These items were entrusted to the National Archives to be used by all citizens, not to be auctioned for personal profit to the highest bidder.”

Investigators say they uncovered Waffen’s “eight-year scheme” in September when he sold a 1937 tape of New York Yankees legend Babe Ruth.

Waffen, 66, sold the recording on eBay for $34.74 under the username “hi-fi_gal.” Federal agents, tipped off to the sale, obtained the tape and traced it back to his work at the National Archives in College Park, Md. They watched and waited and in the next few weeks agents noticed “hi-fi_gal” selling other Archives properties on eBay.

As part of the plea deal, Waffen has agreed to forfeit at least 955 of the recordings and will reimburse the federal government for the “full amount of the loss.”

The Archives has hired appraisers to calculate the value of what’s been sold.

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld of the National Archives and Records Administration declined to say what else Waffen stole until after his sentencing March 5. But he hopes the former archivist receives “the strongest sentence possible,” 10 years in prison.

“We want to put people on notice,” Brachfeld told ABC News. “If they steal from our collection, we are going to put them in prison.”

Until last summer, Waffen had spent five years as chief of the Motion Picture, Sounds and Video Recording Branch at the National Archives. As noted in this New York Times article from 2004, the unit has custody of sound and video recordings of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, including the famed “Zapruder film.” He first began working for the National Archives in 1969.

Red Huber-Pool/Getty Images(ORLANDO, Fla.) -- While Casey Anthony, the Florida woman acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter Caylee has remained in hiding, plenty of merchandise related to her notoriety has popped up.

A latex mask of Anthony is up for sale on the online auction site eBay. According to the listing, the “Tot Mom” mask is only one of nine in existence. User "prophunter" says they were made for a film.

As of Wednesday morning, the mask was going for $25,100 after receiving 87 bids.